10/24/2002 8:59:23 AM, John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com> wrote:
>
>> Maybe someone will stumble across the plot and hand it in to a Lost Property
>> Office.
>
>Sure. Like IETF, or OASIS, or ECMA, or ISO.
Exactly. Outside of one particular area where the W3C Director has a strong
vision and has raised outside funding to support development of that vision,
the W3C doesn't have a "plot." Neither does IETF, OASIS, etc. ... they all
exist to facilitate localize cooperation not global domination. The W3C does
try harder (at least for the last year or so) than most others to maintain
some sort of global consistency, but look how hard it is to sort out even
something as superficially simple as URIs!
Another point that needs to be made is that it's ultimately the membership
that votes with the paychecks of people who do the work. The Master Plan
can say whatever its authors want, but it won't get implemented without
the support from the membership. (Ahem, that's why the Director needs
outside funding to work on his vision).
There are plenty of things that the W3C doesn't do very well and constructive
criticism (or voting with feet) is warranted, but I don't think this is one
of them. Do you *want* some industry consortium to have a Master Plan?
After all, the Web didn't fit into anyone's plot 10 years ago. I for
one am glad that organization had the "vision" or power to keep it suppressed.